Posted
by
samzenpus
on Thursday September 15, 2011 @02:05AM
from the devil-in-the-dark dept.

Sven-Erik writes "Could living things that evolved from metals be clunking about somewhere in the universe? In a lab in Glasgow, UK, one man is intent on proving that metal-based life is possible. He has managed to build cell-like bubbles from giant metal-containing molecules and has given them some life-like properties. He now hopes to induce them to evolve into fully inorganic self-replicating entities. 'I am 100 per cent positive that we can get evolution to work outside organic biology,' says Lee Cronin at the University of Glasgow. His building blocks are large 'polyoxometalates' made of a range of metal atoms — most recently tungsten — linked to oxygen and phosphorus. By simply mixing them in solution, he can get them to self-assemble into cell-like spheres."

Whenever I see an article like this about yet another scientist trying to create artificial life I wonder whether they have watched and read too much science fiction or whether they just haven't seen enough science fiction.

When asked in a talk [ted.com] on this, he claimed that they would have fully replicating matter (IE : 'living' inorganic matter) in 2 years. The host who asked the question sounded startled when he said "That would be, er, something amazing, yes" - in other words "Yeah, right!".

You don't have to have the ability to replicate in order to be alive. For example worker bees can't reproduce, yet they may be considered alive. Also women past menopause and kids are alive yet they can't replicate. Or even some people who many not be fertile for whatever reason.

Also you can't make "ability" to evolve as part of the definition of life.

You don't have to have the ability to replicate in order to be alive. For example worker bees can't reproduce, yet they may be considered alive. Also women past menopause and kids are alive yet they can't replicate. Or even some people who many not be fertile for whatever reason.

Also you can't make "ability" to evolve as part of the definition of life.

This is a very narrow, organism-focused view point. Every cell in bees and other "dead-ends" such as all of your somatic cells, are full of replicators, evolved in such a way to enhance the further replication of the germ-line into future generations. Without genetic replication, life as we know it cannot exist. So, yes, replication is a defining aspect of life.

As for the "ability to evolve"... it's not a definer, but more of an emergent property of any and all systems with error prone replication.

Evolution requires replication, not necessarily self-replication. An earlier poster mentioned viruses, which are an example of a thing, living or not (I'd say not), that evolves without replicating itself.

Broadly speaking, "human men" and "human women" are each not self-replicating, but the system of "human men and human women" is self replicating. Still, you can speak of features that evolved in women distinctly from men, such as prominent breasts, even though human women in isolation do not self-replicate. So as a gedankenexperiment, imagine you have an imperfect cloning machine and a world of only men (the clones pop out full-grown). This single-sex could use it to replicate indefinitely and evolve. And if those men maintain, repair, and build new cloning machines, then you have a species which doesn't self-replicate by itself, but the species-cloning-machine system is self-replicating, much as the man-woman system is self-replicating. Now you can imagine that no new cloning machines are ever made but the one was built to last a hundred million years. Now there is *no* system that's self-replicating but the men still replicate, with the help of the cloning machine, and therefore still evolve.

I don't see why evolution would be a requirement of life anyway. Evolution is merely an inescapable consequence of anything which replicates iteratively and imperfectly, whether or not it is life.

I do know some traditional definitions of life require self-replication, at the species level.

I was about to say the same thing in response to GP. The "self" in self replication does apply, imo, to life, but not to evolution. The meme and the virus are two forms with arguably no "self" replication, just replication.

However, you did make one general error:

...imagine you have an imperfect cloning machine and a world of only men (the clones pop out full-grown). This single-sex could use it to replicate indefinitely and evolve.

Actually, there is no substantial evolution in cloning. The reason is this. Evolution mainly affects embriology, a step your hypothetical cloning process is bypassing. Also, you are missing the massive gene randomization during creation of the

It's pretty tough to get natural life without evolution. It has to spring forth fully formed. And evolution (as in Darwinian) is not an inescapable consequence. You need to have reasonable levels of mutation, some means of crossing strains and reasonable robustness to both processes.

Not even researchers into organic abiogenesis think life started with DNA. In fact, I'd say from my understanding of current theories, DNA came along relatively late in the game in the evolution towards life, and that earlier proto-organisms may have had a much simpler heredity system. Even the "RNA world" hypothesis doesn't start with RNA.

So he made some 'bubbles' that don't dissolve and can mimic some simplest properties of a cell like porous membrane. Without self-replication it is not cell or anything resembling life and without some way to change and pass those changes onto next generation there can be no evolution.
In related news: I took a cardboard box and painted 'screen' and 'keyboard' on it. It totally proves that laptop can be made from cardboard. Of course it does not work, but this is just a little detail that can be worked out later.

Nobody ever said self replication has to work the same way it does for us. The article does say he found ways for the cells to use other cells as templates for modification and indeed replication.It's an interesting approach to replication - as it changes one existing cell into a replica of another, but it's quite feasible. More-over we have no actual idea what the earliest organic structures looked like, or even how they came to exist. There are dozens of viable theories on abiogenesis and none of them are currently provable - for all we know, that is exactly how the earliest replicating life began ! What were we BEFORE we were cells ? Surely we were simpler, more primitive cells with less of the features of current ones, and before that ? Well the mitochondria we have INSIDE our cells were once a seperate organism... now what used to be something alive in it's own right, is just a component of our cells. How many other components of our cells began as seperate, simpler, life form but didn't leave us fossils to conveniently prove it with ?

This research is in fact incredibly exciting because it shows a way of experimenting with ways early life may have begun. It's using different materials - but that's actually a GOOD thing, as it stops us from trying to just recreate what we have when we don't know what, what we have, used to be. It forces us to think from scratch, as life would have started... and that IS exciting.More-over, if it works, if it gets far enough... it opens up entire new avenues of consideration in terms of how life may have evolved on other worlds.

This research is in fact incredibly exciting because it shows a way of experimenting with ways early life may have begun. It's using different materials - but that's actually a GOOD thing, as it stops us from trying to just recreate what we have when we don't know what, what we have, used to be. It forces us to think from scratch, as life would have started... and that IS exciting.

Well, you make a better case for his research than he does:)

Indeed, it is a good idea to have model systems that show the same features, but are not necessarily 'what happened'. They can show the principles are general enough to occur spontaneously with a reasonable probability. Another thing about inorganic cells is they are one of the possibilities for part of the systems in early life. In other words; something had to concentrate the chemicals and simple macromolecules that were starting to form so that

The only thing that worries me is if the "Intelligent Design" folks latch onto this. It seems like this guy is going to continue tweaking the experiment in hope of generating some self-replicating strain of his bubbles. (Heck, I would too.) But the ID crowd might see this as "proof" that life could only begin with "guidance" from above.

The only thing that worries me is if the "Intelligent Design" folks latch onto this. It seems like this guy is going to continue tweaking the experiment in hope of generating some self-replicating strain of his bubbles. (Heck, I would too.) But the ID crowd might see this as "proof" that life could only begin with "guidance" from above.

So what? They do that to anything whether it makes any sense or not. Digital cameras are as much "proof" that eyes can only be created by a "designer".

So what's the worry? That IDers will say "Ah ha!" and continue to think and say silly things? Oh noes! Science will as always press on without them.

I've read of some theories that suggests that the earliest kinds of life, before RNA or DNA, may not have self-replicated as we understand it, but may have used external forces, like wave action or turbidity to physically cause cell division. You really have to stretch your mind here and get past a lot of the assumptions we've built up because we live in a world with fully-evolved life forms.

Perhaps *in theory* you could create some system using metals, but in practice in the real world if there was any carbon around in the system than whatever kicks off "life" would be more likely to end up using that simply because of the flexibility it allows and metal based organisms would soon be outcompeted and go extinct. Also its curious to note that his system still requires water.

Wasn't silicon the carbon alternative a few decades back? Whatever happened to the ideas of alternative life based on that (no, not electronics)?

His goal is not to prove, disprove or otherwise challenge evolution. If he manages to build such life forms (what he did yet definitely isn't one), it will certainly be his creation and would say exactly nothing about evolution, nor is it intended to do. What he wants to prove is that metal based life is possible at all.

I'm also sceptical that he will manage to do it (independent from the question if metallic life forms would be possible in principle). But the point is, no matter if he does, it won't tell a

Interesting post. I think that you are right, but for the wrong reasons.

As you point out, a major part of the story of life is the growth in complexity. Just having a bounding membrane - Cronin's current claim - is only the first step on a long road. A key next step is - like ATP synthase - to set up an energy source. It is thought by some that the first membranes played an important role in energy capture by allowing primitive cells to set up an ion gradient across them

The problem that I see is a lack of potential in non-carbon structures. The number of possible forms of proteins is very large; the number for polyoxometallates is larger then most inorganic forms but still smaller than organic. So he may get some steps down the road of complexity, but run out of steam (to mix metaphors!) half way there.

Finally, crystal structures only show one feature of life : growth. If he can demonstrate self-replicating, self-repairing, self-bounding, inorganic structures then it will be life.

If he can demonstrate self-replicating, self-repairing, self-bounding, inorganic structures then it will be life.

Out of curiosity; why do thinkt that those things are required for life? Why does life have to be self-repairing and to what extent?
what about self-bounding, do you mena that things that aren't self-bounding aren't alive?
What if I'm not self-replicating, does this mean that I aren't alive?

Hmmm. Well, as others have pointed out in the comments on this story, you can come up with definitions for life (like "reproduces") and then find counterexamples ("eunuchs"). Since we only have one example of life - on this planet - its a bit difficult to generalise

I must have read the properties I listed (self -replicating, -repairing, -bounding) in a book. I agree that you can think up situations where they don't hold, but it's a fairly good list. Note of course, that I'm really talking about cells; which

The problem is that life doesn't have a nice clean definition. In a way, the life concept is like the species concept, you can create definitions that apply to most situations and admit that there are always outliers that don't fit to the definitions you've produced, or create definitions so broad that you end up with little enough descriptive power.

Would we have called the first proto-cells that were say, simply a lipid shell, life? Probably not. They couldn't self-replicate, their heredity system was p

And a suggestion; You can believe any one of the thousands of different creation myths and nobody will give a rat's arse, but please stop trying to use science to support your anti-science, it makes you look foolish and it annoys the hell out of people who have even the foggiest idea what they are talking about..

1. They were less complex, but much more so than these inorganic ones. It's not clear if the inner complexity of even the simplest cell will 'just happen' if you throw enough polyoxometallates (POMs? POXes?) into the mix. The transfer of information between cells is interesting (perhaps I should have read the article), but there may be other components necessary to drive the complexity up.

2. That video describes a plausible evolutionary pathway to the flagellum from ATP synthase. Possibly there is a similar

>Note: I am a creation believing christain. I dont believe in evolution. (I do believe in natural selection)

Congratulations, so was Darwin. Now you only have 150 years of biology left to catch up on...

Actually what I think you MEANT to say is that you don't believe in abiogenesis. Evolution is the concept of organisms changing, natural selection is one of the effects that can drive the direction of evolution and almost certainly the most important one but there are others which have been identified (most

That is the ancient Lamarckian theorem, just because we've got reason to think that it may have some truth, it says NOTHING about evolution. If anything it strengthens it.

>1. `many scientists today believe this was not required and there are several alternative viable theories': are they really `viable', are todays scientist all that non-error-prone?

You're confusing meanings of "viable". Viable in this context means "could work" not "will work". They are viable in that they make sense, do not violate the known laws of nature and may be true. That is not a claim that they are correct, or that it is what actually happened - we don't have the means (at least not yet) to determine what actually happened, which is the only way to prove any such theory. Even if we used one to create new life tomorrow it wouldn't prove the theory true- it would still remain "viable" only, we'll have given it a LOT more evidence (by showing that it CAN happen that way with absolute certainty) but we would not have proven that it DID happen that way. Science is not non-error-prone, science however has incredibly high standards of testing that it uses to REMOVE errors. Where testing is impossible (or at least very difficult) theories hold less weight. That we can't know for sure if it was crystaline or clay or any of the other theories of abiogenesis doesn't weaken science, it's proof of science's resilience in that it refuses to call a theory "Fact" without being able to check.

2>...Your whole paragraph is entirely non-sensicle. Showing that the universe and life can come to exist in it's present state without a conscious creation process reduces the need to invoke a creator to explain it. All religion, including your own, came from our ancestors inabillity to explain things. Now we can explain (almost) all of them, and their explanation (some big all-powerful guy did it) holds a LOT less water.The simple truth is - if you believe in God, that's your right, but don't mix theology and science because they have NOTHING in common (except origins - a long, long time ago - both tried to explain the world to people). Science questions itself, religion does not - this makes them fundamentally incompatible. You can believe in God and accept science as valuable, but you cannot pretend that the one can enligthen you about the other. To reject a scientific idea on the grounds that it conflicts with religion is hypocrisy unless you are equally willing to reject a religious idea on the grounds that it conflicts with science.Either way you're playing a very difficult mental balancing game between a way of thinking built on rationality and demand of proof and consistent, critical self-questioning versus one built on "do and think as you are told".

>Did you know that carbon 14 dating is pretty erratic, and to such an extent that one can interpret the given as he wishes?

Did you know that only an idiot doesn't know that ? Scientists don't rely on ONE test. We combine carbon dating with geological evidence and literally THOUSANDS of other pieces of evidence to date things. The "deep time" theory started in geology and goes back Hutton in the 18th century. That is to say - we knew the earth was billions of years old nearly 150 years before we knew enou

>`It has no whims and no desires. It has no demands and no opinions or thoughts or will': interesting, can one not use an extension to the eminently un-bodily of empirical induction (in view of our being thus), to give some vraisemblance to His existence; or, could it be not frighteningly probable that a Being of which we are but restrictions, actually exists?

That suggestion would only be worthy of consideration if the universe behaved inconsistently. A being with a mind would not be at all times perfect

Yes, C14 contradicts it, as does every other form of radioisotope dating, not to mention every other single bit of data relating to humanity's time on the planet. C14 is only good for, as I recall, up to somewhere around 30,000 years ago.

Years ago when I was hanging around talk.origins, I remember the famous observation that if radioactive decay happened at the levels YECs claimed, the Earth would be molten due to the sheer amount energy being released.

Decay rates are well understood, and providing a researcher understands what external factors can influence isotope decay rates (which physicists who measure decay rates for chronological purposes certainly can), it is a powerful tool for dating.

>Evolution is taught as a concept things changing but it makes the grand claim of things improving upon themselves to do it, by gaining complexity and self forming into "higher" life forms.

No, it does not. Evolution simply favors that which survives the best. Sometimes it does so by REDUCING complexity. A good example: frog genomes are nearly 500 times more complex than human genomes (that is - they have about 500 times as many genes as we do). Yet frogs have been around a lot longer than we are and are way more primitive. But frog DNA has to deal with all sorts of things - a tadpole in an egg needs to develop at a certain rate, that implies chemical reactions and chemical reactions are temperature sensitive. So if it gets warmer the enzymes need to have things added that slow down the reactions, if it gets colder other things are added to speed them up. Frog DNA are filled with countless little variations of "if temperature is between X and Y add enzyme Z" for every proteine in their bodies.Humans (in fact all mammals) get to grow in a climate controlled environment so we have long since discarded all that extra DNA which egg-layers have. We've evolved to survive better by getting SIMPLER - not more complex.

Most of the rest of your post is common and well debunked arguments. They are based on truth but the conclusions are false since they are massively oversimplified.

Here's a little example of such an oversimplification. Humans (and most other mammals) contain a protein called HSP-90. HSP-90 is one of those special proteines which fold other proteins into shape. It is very rigid, and will fold them into the "orthodox" shape EVEN IF the DNA has mutated, suppressing mutations from being realized into grown cells. Call it a checker for copying errors in DNA.But HSP means "Heat Shock Proteine", HSP proteins are a family of proteins that the body uses in cases of sudden temperature change to help regulate our warm-blooded body temperatures. So if during early gestation there is a sudden temperature change- HSP gets diverted from folding proteins into it's "adult" job of regulating body temperature. Now the folding gets done by other folders - which lack it's rigidy and will simply do whatever the DNA says.

Look what's happening here - usually the body will suppress mutations, they could lie dormant for thousands of years without a single person born in which they have actually been realized, there's a sudden climate change - now the body stops suppressing, mutations galore get allowed to be realized into offspring. Evolution reached the point of doing it on-demand. When there is sudden climate change, it allows every mutation it has available to occur. This is beautiful. When things are stable - stick to what's working, when things change - the species tries everything. It uses every weird mutation it has to try and produce a version that may be suited to surviving in the new conditions.One form of rapid speciation is triggered by HSP-90's effects. Of course MOST of those mutations die out, but if one is better suited to the sudden ice-age (or whatever) then it survives and breeds better- and once it goes to a second generation that DNA is now treated AS the orthodox, so it's not suppressed anymore. Voila - species change in a single generation. Using saved up mutations over thousands or even millions of years, that never ever showed up as organisms until the time when the world changed and sticking to "what always worked" is no longer a good idea.

>Charles became an atheist. I think it happened when one of his children died, but I could be wrong on that.

He died a troubled agnostic, but at the time when he was writing his grand works he was definitely a believer and in fact Origin of Species and Descent of Man both directly credit God for starting the process (multiple times). He actually held back on publishing Origin for nearly a decade because he feared that people could interpret it in ways that could harm his beloved church.

Evolution is taught as a concept things changing but it makes the grand claim of things improving upon themselves to do it, by gaining complexity and self forming into "higher" life forms

Maybe your problem is you had a bad biology teacher, because what you just wrote there would be rejected by every single biologist over the last 80 or 90 years. No one in the better part of a century has thought that evolution has a direction. Evolution, simply put, is the change in the genetic makeup of a population over

Atheist already ignore all the tech in organic cells so it's seems like this event will be more probable.

Evolutionary biology neither a cause nor a requirement of atheism. Raelians are creation believing atheists. St. Augustine famously commented that it was foolish to cling blindly to scriptural untruths in the face of overwhelming evidence. Of course discarding Genesis would be extreme, but certainly taking it to be metaphorical is more tenable than combatting sound science with stories of talking snakes tempting a simple-minded rib woman in to eating magical fruit. There is no dogma in atheism - only (with

Second of all, no one thinks primitive cells were at all like the cells we see today, or for the last 3.5 to 3.8 billion years. This is like insisting that a Model T isn't an automobile because it doesn't have fuel injection, or ENIAC wasn't a computer because it didn't have USB ports and a hard drive.

Third, evolution happened. As much as anything in science is a fact, evolution is a fact.

Nothing, really. All replicating things need energy and building materials. Biological lifeforms don't contain significant amounts of tungsten, so these cells have exactly nothing to gain by targeting us. In fact most of our environment does not contain significant amounts of tungsten, so outside the lab, these cells will have no chance of spreading. Even if they make it to a giant tungsten supply, they still need phosphorus and oxygen, and the former is probably not kept i

Unless, of course, that movie is I, Robot. I can dig Will Smith in most action nonsense films, and sometimes he even shows some chops (Ali comes to mind), but I, Robot was a horrible movie. They would have been better off sticking to the book.